A bit of a shocker, David Frum, one of National Review’s biggest writers is leaving the National Review.
This comes via the New York Times:
Now David Frum, a prominent conservative writer who enmeshed himself in a minor dustup during the campaign by turning negative on Governor Palin, is leaving, too. In an interview, he said he planned to leave the magazine, where he writes a popular blog, to strike out on his own on the Web.
“The answers to the Republican dilemma are not obvious and we need a vibrant discussion,” he said. “I think a little more distance can help everybody do a better job of keeping their temper.”
[…]
Mr. Frum said deciding to leave was amicable, but distancing himself from the magazine founded by his idol, Mr. Buckley, was not a hard decision. He said the controversy over Governor Palin’s nomination for vice president was “symbolic of a lot of differences” between his views and those of National Review’s.
“I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated,” he said.
Mr. Frum witnessed the upbraiding his fellow conservative, the columnist Kathleen Parker, received when she wrote in her syndicated column on the National Review’s Web site arguing that Governor Palin was unfit to be vice president. Ms. Parker received nearly 11,000 e-mail messages, one of which lamented that her mother did not abort her.
“Who says public discourse hasn’t deteriorated?” she wrote in a followup column that ran on the Web site. (National Review, as Mr. Lowry pointed out, can hardly be held responsible for a reader’s nasty e-mail messages.)
Of course, the best thing that the NRO staff can say are:
“I’ll miss David too and wish him luck (though I have some possibly misinformed misgivings about his project. Time will tell). But there is a personal irony for me in that David counselled me not to sign up to become NRO’s first editor over a decade ago. He thought another idea I had for a stand-alone website made more sense. I rejected the (appreciated) advice and started working on NRO. I think I made the right call and was much amused when David joined our ranks a few years later. Now he’s off to start a stand-alone project. We’ll see how it turns out. I really do wish him luck.” – Jonah Goldberg
“I’ve been a Frum fan long before he wrote for NRO and I’m sorry to see him go. He contributed to the constructive realtime debates that have always been a part of NRO, debates NRO will continue to have going forth.” – Kathryn Jean Lopez
Wow, do you think you guys could get just a little bit more condescending in your well wishes? Oy. The truth is that David Frum has seen what many other Conservatives and Libertarians alike have known for years. That the current message of the Republican Party is just simply wrong. The the so-called “Bush Doctrine” was a flawed state of mind; Which that took the classic Conservative position of resolution of conflict by peaceful means, to a warmongering position of domination of the world by Military might.
Further more, the whole idea of Bush wanting to spread American style democracy by Military might was a very flawed idea. One that assumed that people from the middle east would welcome such a thing. It now turns out that we were very wrong about that one too.
Now we have Republicans who want to see the Automotive companies here in Detroit collapse, thereby allowing employees, like this writers Father; pensions go into jeopardy. Something of which this writer takes very personally. Why should my damn Father suffer for the gross incompetence of the management of General Motors? I could go on an on about this, but the bail-out is another subject for another Blog posting.
I wish Frum the best and I hope he is able to make it on his own. It’s tough to be an independent writer. He has the name recognition, so, I think he will do very well. Good Luck David. 😀